Plateau

Planning out our Saturday, I ran across Jeff Barker's article in the Baltimore Sun in reference to concerns about attendance at women's college basketball games.  It's pretty dark.  Attendance for first round games was better in 2000 than last year!  Lots of negative framing, like:

Last season's average attendance of 4,887 for the tournament games in College Park may sound meager, but it surpassed the national average of 4,134 for the same sessions.

(I mean, 5,000 people going to watch a live college sporting event doesn't sound meager, but ok...)

My daughters had said they wanted to go to Maryland's tournament opener and Barker's piece clinched it for me -- if support for women's basketball was evaporating, we weren't also going to turn our back.  I forwarded it to friends and family also considering going to the game.

It took us a little while to get in.  Took us a little longer to find open seats for the general admission all-sessions strips we bought.  Which, in retrospect, makes sense since attendance for the game was 7,948 people.

Waiting in line for twenty minutes to get a hot dog led me to think about the premise of the article a little bit.  Interest in women's college basketball has plateaued?  That doesn't seem consistent with what we've seen.  But we've got a limited perspective and the sea of empty seats in Hoffman Estates for the Big Ten Conference tournament was disturbing.

Why was women's college basketball more popular in 2000 than in 2015?  The game is a lot better now, both in terms of quality and in terms of comparative talent between teams.  New Mexico State -- as the 16 seed -- was well-coached and posed a legitimate threat to a very good Maryland team.

Was women's college basketball more popular in 2000 than in 2015?

In 2000, 6.36 million people attended Division I women's college basketball games.  Last season, 8.14 million people attended Division I women's college basketball games.  Which means that in 2014, 1.78 million more people went to a women's college basketball game than in 2000 -- an increase of 28%.  Which is kind of a lot.

The per game attendance average is only slightly higher than it was in 2000, but there were also 28 more Division I teams and 892 more games played in 2014.

The increase has been gradual and fairly consistent year-by-year, although there has not been much of a jump over the last five years.  Still, attendance in 2014 was the second highest its been in history.

Surprisingly, Maryland hasn't been contributing to recent growth in women's basketball attendance.  Attendance has been substantially below 2007-2008 peaks, years when Maryland, on its own, accounted for 2% of all attendance in the sport.  Now, with the decline in attendance at the school and increase in overall attendance, Maryland comprises about 1% of total attendance and hovers between 80 and 100 thousand people:

Has interest in the women's college game declined?  Absolutely not.  Is there a need to be concerned?  Probably not.  The fundamentals of the game are sound.  New schools, like South Carolina, mirror Maryland with explosive growth in interest and attendance.  In fact, South Carolina outdrew Maryland in 2014 (in the chart below, 2007 and 2008 aren't listed because South Carolina's attendance wasn't high enough to be reported in the NCAA data source used):

And traditional powerhouses in attendance, like Notre Dame, have also seen interest increase over the last several years:

Shrug

Eight years ago today, I was one of a small band of hearty D.C. United supporters to troop out to RFK for the administration of last rites to C.D. Olimipia's CONCACAF Champions' Cup campaign.  I fell in love with Luciano Emilio that night.  Two weeks later over three times as many people attended the first leg of the next round's matchup against Omar Bravo and Chivas Guadalajara. DCU fell a goal short of reaching the final.  It was thrilling.  Something I hoped to relive, as a fan and season ticket holder, again and again and again:  An MLS team punching above its weight (because of circumstances) in CONCACAF competition.

This year?  No interest in going to watch the second leg match-up this week.  Not because I'm embarrassed by the 5-2 score line in Costa Rica.  Rather, because I'm embarrassed that there have not been significant improvements in the treatment of players through the auspices of a new collective bargaining agreement.

If you sum up the salaries of the 30 players listed as part of D.C. United in the MLS Player Association's September 15, 2014 release of individual salary information, the total amount the club was spending was $3.96 million.  The New England Revolution's Jermaine Jones, on his own, was paid a salary of $3.25 million.  As every MLS fan knows, there are several individual players that make more in annual salary than the entire D.C. United team combined, including Kaka, Michael Bradley, and Clint Dempsey.

So what?  No big deal.  If anything, the fact that such high wages can be paid by so many different MLS clubs should be seen as a demonstration of the robust health of the overall league.

Maybe.  What can't be seen as healthy is when one of the starting fullbacks for an American side in the region's premier tournament is getting paid less than $37k a year for his services.  If you're counting at home, Taylor Kemp's salary -- the salary of a college graduate -- is 1.12% of the annual salary of Jermaine Jones.  Again, that's what a starting PROFESSIONAL soccer player is being paid in a single-entity league that is also refusing to entertain relegation and actively trying to undermine its lower division competition in the North American Soccer League.

The majority of the listed DC United players made less than $100k (16 of the 30).  Eight made less than $50k including a player with English league experience (Conor Doyle) and the starting goalkeeper in last week's debacle (Andrew Dykstra). 

How much is that?  With a bachelor of arts and no experience, the base salary of a D.C. public school teacher is $51,539. 

These numbers are insane.  They are a joke.  They undermine any possible claim that the MLS is on its way to becoming one of the major American sports leagues. 

If MLS imposed a minimum salary of $100k, THE MAJORITY OF THE  ROSTER WOULD HAVE GOTTEN A RAISE and the total salary cost for DCU's 30 players would have increased by less than $700k to $4.63 million, an increase of 17%.  All together, that's a little bit more than what Landon Donovan made last year.

When MLS owners draw a line in the sand and say no free agency, they've got to be held to account for the $37k Taylor Kemp made last year playing for DC United.  1.12% of what Jermaine Jones earned in salary in the same league, based on a salary JJ was able to negotiate with a single-entity competing with international clubs also vying for his services.

Popular

A lot of people go see college basketball.  A lot of people in the Richmond-DC-Baltimore corridor go see college basketball, as we're blessed here with a number of marquee programs. 

Maryland had over 14,000 turn out for the last men’s home game at the Xfinity Center (the win over Penn State).  And we were amongst the 10,937 in the stadium today for the women’s win over Nebraska.  Virginia’s pulling in almost 15,000 to John Paul Jones for men's games down in Charlottesville.  Just three weeks ago, we were four of the 14,281 at the Verizon Center for Georgetown's win over Butler.  

Virginia Commonwealth has routinely drawn 7,637 to the Siegel Center.  The University of Richmond sold out the Robins Center (7,201) for its loss to the University of Rhode Island today; George Mason got 6,473 into the Patriot Center for their loss to VCU on Wednesday; George Washington saw 4,579 come out to the Charles E. Smith Center for its win over Dayton on Friday night; and there were 3,847 at the SECU Arena for Towson's loss to James Madison yesterday.  

Some of the local teams play to smaller crowds.  Mt. St. Mary's last home game, a win over St. Francis (PA), got 2,524 people out to Knott Arena in Emmitsburg. When the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s men’s basketball racked up another miserable loss in a miserable season to Binghamton two weeks ago, there were 748 people at RAC Arena.  American University’s men’s team drew 1,230 folks to Bender Arena for their victory over Loyola last Wednesday.  Loyola, for its part, got 1,449 out to Reitz Arena for its disappointing loss to Lehigh last night.

As a general matter, local people go see college basketball.  Stadiums are built on campus and these stadiums are filled for basketball.  But with the entry into the Big Ten this year, the Xfinity Center in College Park is seeing people turn out for a lot of different sports.  

There were a lot of people at the women's game this afternoon and it took a long time to get off camps once the game was over.  While waiting, we had sometime to talk about all the different sporting events we've attended at Xfinity this academic year.  So far this season, we've been in the stadium for a volleyball match, against Penn State, that drew 4,522, for the remarkable "Beauty and the Beast" joint gymnastics-wrestling event that brought out 2,091 people, and then, this Saturday night, for the gymnastics dual against the University of Michigan that set an attendance record for that sport at Maryland with 2,207 people going through the turnstiles.  The one event we didn't make this past weekend that I had hoped to go to was the wrestling dual against Iowa -- for which 2,139 people walked into the stadium.  

Overall, the volleyball team ranked 25th in the country in terms of attendance this season, averaging 1,539 at each home match.

These numbers are crazy.  

And they're not driven by students.  Instead, on a weekly basis, people outside of the University are streaming onto campus to watch something at Xfinity.  Many of these people will become part of the University community -- our ties to the school are certainly growing, as we'll send our kids to camps there this summer and were at these athletic events with other families that intend to do so as well.  

There are probably all kinds of good reasons to quarrel with the move to a new conference.  But the switch to the B1G certainly promises an opportunity to grow many sports that had no similar prospects in the ACC.  In the meantime, what has been happening at Xfinity this year is a living, breathing example of how a academic institution's athletics program can be a public good.